Ending the political circus

Once again, Texas is at the center of fugitive legislature drama. For the last quarter century, Democrats of the state have been treated badly by political fortune. They’ve descended deep into the minority of the state houses and have utterly failed to take a major hide such as Ted Cruz, even when it seemed everything was going their way and enormous sums had been raised. And now, they face further insult as their Republican opponents have taken the opportunity of a major court decision to attempt to redraw the congressional districts so as to gain additional seats and perhaps protect the slim D.C. majority by so doing.

Having zero ability to change out a terrible political hand and to find some way to draw an ace, the Texas’s legislative Democrats have resorted to the most desperate of stratagems. Several of them have fled the state, thereby depriving the Republican majority of a quorum of members present to do business. The name for the maneuver is quorum busting. It’s been done before in Texas and elsewhere, but it typically results in delay rather than denial of the majority’s will. Although big donors are funding fugitive Democrats and promise to pay the fines they incur, it is likely that eventually enough Democrats will drift back into their state having made their point, but not winning the war.

The Republicans may well manage to redraw the lines and to improve their party’s chance of holding Congress in the 2026 elections. In the United States, one of the few civic lessons that seems to stick in the minds of students is that the aggressive and opportunistic methods legislators use to draw advantageous districts is not fair and should probably be reformed out of our political lives. But the other lesson is that it remains a common practice in red states and blue ones. The state of Massachusetts, despite having had Republican governors and having elected a Republican senator in recent memory, does not have a single Republican congressional district.

At the same time redistricting has become an issue in Texas, there is additional conflict over a federal court ruling in favor of the state’s efforts to strengthen voter identification requirements and to tighten up the conditions under which voters can use mail ballots. While an effort to redraw lines in the middle of a decade before the census can be taken may raise eyebrows, there is likely to be substantial support for the state’s attempt to shore up confidence in voting procedures.

These two Texas controversies point the way to what should perhaps become a new national settlement in the interest of bolstering our faith in the political system. There are actions we can take to weave a stronger national electoral fabric.

First, the efforts Texas has made to be absolutely certain that votes are cast by the individuals entitled to cast them should be lauded rather than scorned. Certainly, it is possible to make hay of the civil rights era and terrible voting rights abuses from that time. Nevertheless, today’s urgent task is to ensure election integrity and to prevent any kind of insidious manipulation. By requiring identification and making sure mail ballots are used properly, Texas actually increases confidence in its electoral outcomes.

Second, we should recognize that most Americans understand that electoral districts should not be drawn in a mercenary manner with no purpose other than to retain the party in power. It is time to begin looking at reforms to how congressional districts (and other electoral districts are drawn). Principles such as achieving reasonable compactness, using relatively simple shapes, preserving existing city or county lines, and otherwise retaining existing communities should be employed. By getting rid of opportunistic line drawing, we will reduce cynicism on the part of voters, diminish rancor among the political parties, increase the number of competitive districts, and inhibit the temptation to abuse power. Ending the requirement that Texas (and other states) create majority-minority districts may help improve the fairness of how lines are drawn, but it would be naïve to assume that will actually be the case given track records around the nation.

Our political parties are functioning in such a way as to accumulate power and therefore to be able to enact policy. We need that. But there is a deeper sense in which we need to be thinking about more than just power. We need to put some real spiritual, moral, and social capital behind the idea of a system with integrity and principle. Power is important, but so is public-spiritedness and fairness. We don’t put pictures of Machiavelli on U.S. currency, clever though he may have been.